why worry

It's Australia Day here, with lots of official flag flying, marching bands, citizenship ceremonies, speeches, and cascading gongs. That's the official image; the reality is that great bulk of citizenry spend the day at the beach or some other pleasant pursuit. Australia Day also marks the end of the summer holidays for most, and the school year starts tomorrow. That's strange because the end of January is like the end of July in Europe, a time when most set off on holidays. Moreover, summer here continues for another two months or more!

Yesterday, Dot and I, and Dot's friend Jane, got in the festive mood by driving over to a local vineyard for lunch and a bit of wine-tasting. The whyworry vineyard is part of the big push in this area to produce cold-climate wines. Most of the investment in grape growing come from outside the region, but this operation was set up by a local sheep farmer at Uralla 21 km south of Armidale and he must have had a sense of humour to name it thus. The vinyard is 1130m asl and the owners told us that the climate is much more like France and Southern Germany than most parts of Australia, which is great for producing Riesling.

The lunch was very good and cheap, but I didn't taste too much wine as I was driving. We certainly enjoyed the wines they produce and bought several bottles. We lingered long soaking up the lovely landscape as shown in the picture. The distant hills to the north were about 40 km away and draped with a massive thunder cloud. Between us and the 1400m hills were miles of quiet pastures and woodland, all bathed in fierce sun-light. By the way, the temperature at 1130m was a very warm 31 centigrade (or c. 88F).

AS

Boxing Kangaroo

One of our national flags portrays a boxing kangaroo and it is often used at sporting events. For example, Alan Bond's yacht flew the flag when it won the America's cup back in the 1970s. Well, kangaroos do box each other and I witnessed a couple of 'roos doing precisely that outside my office window at work yesterday morning. Four young 'roos were only about 50m away on a hillside grazing on some succulent green grass and members of this pod (the collective for a group of 'roos) occasionally diverted into mutual grooming and sparring. Shortly after, at morning tea, one of my colleagues remembered driving away from UNE at night and seeing a group of possums fleeing in front of him. However, one of the possums was much larger than the others and seemed to be struggling. On closer inspection it turned out that the possum was in fact a koala! It's nice working on a campus where we can witness such events.

The picture shows some of the kangaroos with the two on the left having just finished their spat.

AS

Lamb and Potato Festival

Dot, her friend Jane and I decided at short notice to go up to Guyra for the Lamb and Potato Festival. This extravaganza celebrates the two main local agricultural products and is mostly visited by locals, except for curious drivers on the main N-S New England Highway. Guyra is one of Australia's highest and coldest towns at about 1350 m asl, and it only has a population of about 2,000.



Extravaganza might be an inappropriate word if you judge by what was on offer: lamb dinners of various kinds, an exhibition of line dancing, a sheep shearing demonstration with kids wielding the shears much to the terror of the quadrupeds, and numerous stallholders vending bits and pieces of use to country people. Mainly, it was an excuse for isolated rural people to get together for a chat. The participants were, to put it kindly, of an older demographic and, from the way they dressed, talked and presented themselves, deeply conservative. Most had something to do with land.

We met up with Dot's friends, Diana and Ian, who own a lifestyle block at Black Mountain. This little village of less than 50 people lies at the top of the range about 8 km south of Guyra in the direction of Armidale, and we spent a pleasant couple of hours there around a table before heading home.

AS

Feeding Birds

Several years ago, Emily gave us a lovely circular bird feeder with a thatched roof which we've hung from the branch of a tree in our garden. We try to keep it topped up with a mixture of different seeds of various sizes and the results are spectacular. We have a procession of very plump birds passing through. All, as far as we can tell live locally and we suspect that they have a well developed lookout and communication system because they visit en masse shortly after filling up the tray.

We attract many kinds of seed eating birds, but mostly parrots, finches and sparrows. The parrots are wonderful and include the Eastern Rosella, the Crimson Rosella, and the large King Parrot which is green apart from a brilliant red chest. Most of our guests happily eat even if the cats are hanging around. The birds seem to have worked out that the feeder is sufficiently high to protect them. They've probably also assessed that a 15 year old overweight Juno is an unlikely stalker. The picture shows a Crimson Rosella at the feeder.

AS

Five Utes

For my overseas readers, I'll start by defining the word Ute (=utility). Basically it's a pickup truck like those shown in the picture - a two-seater cab, plus tray on the back for tools and equipment. For some reason they're invariably painted white and are used by tradesmen and farmers ... and others like me needing to take flat-pack IKEA furniture from Brisbane to Armidale. Utes' loads are rarely covered.



Just across the road from us, five young blokes are renting a house. They all appear to be working on the land, or tradesmen, or possibly working at the nearby Hillgrove antimony and gold mine. Anyway, each has a white ute and yesterday, for the first time I've noticed, they were all lined up together all facing in the same direction just like a flock of sheep. I don't know if you've noticed that sheep tend to graze pointing the same way.

How appropriate! Five agricultural blokes running five similar vehicles imitating a flock of sheep. I just had to take the photo.

AS

Press Release

I reported a short while ago on the opening of the Earth Studies building on which I spent so much of my time when I was head of school. Belatedly, the story was published by our local freebie newspaper, the Armidale Independent (Vol 13,52,page 5) on 31 December 08. Here it is, and hopefully you can read it!



AS

New Year's Eve

The last few days of 2008 were rather quiet: just the two of us and Dot's brother, Dick. However, New Year's Eve was possibly the best day of 2008, weatherwise: not a cloud in the sky, pleasantly warm (28 degrees C), and relatively low humidity.

We decided to visit one of the geocaches I planted almost a year ago and check that it still existed. It was a lovely walk through the Oxley-Wild Rivers national park to get to the location. For the record, the site is GC18TZ6 at S 30:35.847; E 151:48.211 and you can find it on Google Earth, especially if you have geocaches enabled. The site is just off the track following a disused flume that once delivered water to one of Australia's oldest hydro-electricity stations built a century or so ago. Hence my full name for the location is "Get Flumed", which sounds more interesting than GC18TZ6!

The site is also perched high on a hillside over- looking the Gara River as it tumbles from the Tablelands to the bottom of the Gara Gorge some 300m below. After our heavy rains, stream flow was substantial and the dry sclerophyl woodland surrounding the track was covered in native orchids ... very pretty. Interestingly, visitora to the cache the previous day had planted a travel bug. It is now my job to send this bug (a metal and coded tag) on its way to a new geocache somewhere in the world and the owner (and I) can track its movements around the country because its movements are logged on a special web-site.

AS

Christmas Day

Christmas day was no less hectic despite Max's departure for Tamworth and the coast the day earlier. We had three separate engagements, first visiting Dot's friend Jane and two of her three sons for morning tea and nibbles. After a weight raising two hours, we then moved on to Dot's cousin Bob's house on a property called Springmount about 20km north of Armidale.

There must have been 25 people or so at this waist expanding Christmas lunch. In fact, there was so much food, that the left-overs would have fed Napoleon's entire army during its retreat from Moscow back to France in 1812. The lunch itself was held in some splendour amidst Bob's collection of antique furniture and Christmas memorabilia. Of special note, was his collection of perhaps 20 mechanical Santas who say ho ho and other things while nodding cheerfully in one's direction. These were augmented by several nativity scenes (being good catholics), hosts of angels, and lots of mock vegetation in the form of wreaths etc. See the accompanying photo.

Finally, in late afternoon, we returned home for a recovery session prior to heading iff next door to our neighbour, Christine Hunt. She had all her tribe around, including Kassandra and Michelle who grew up with Emily and Rebecca. Dot and Dick had to reluctantly bow out of this third extravaganza on account of tiredness, but I ventured forth to play Boules (French bowls) on their lawn.

However, that wasn't quite all for Christmas Day. I had a Skype session planned for 20.00, but that went belly up when the program refused to operate and I had to download the latest version. Alas, Phillip and Brian were eating breakfast in Plymouth by the time I got it working and somehow we never reconnected.

AS

second coming

Five days after leaving Canberra, Beck, Max and Rob turned up in Armidale for 4-5 days. It was a boisterous and tiring few days with Max at the helm and each day started with him climbing into our bed at 5.30 am. He spent his time thereafter:
* hunting for spiders and other insects (and associated entomological work)
* playing in various parks (with ever hair-raising and unintended use of equipment)
* shopping
* bush walks
* watching videos, and
* beating us at his favourite game of matching pairs of animal tiles laid face down.
I played him four or five times and only won once. He also received a variety of presents and went shopping for a few more, though he didn't quite realise they were for him. Once upon a time, young kids were in bed by 19.30, but Max managed to keep going for an hour or so longer.

The picture show Max hunting for lizards, tadpoles, and yabbies (crustaceans).

AS

Christmas a Week Early

As I had a meeting with my specialist in Newcastle last Friday, we decided to extend the trip to Canberra to see Emily and Greg for the first time since they returned from the US and meet up again with Beck, Rob and Max. Absence from the last-named gives us perpetual withdrawal symptoms.

It's not normally a difficult drive from Newcastle to Canberra because it is freeway conditions for most of the way and I had acquired an e-tag to navigate the toll roads around Sydney. An e-tag means avoiding toll-booths by paying fees electronically as you speed past instead. On this occasion, it poured heavily for most of the journey and the heavy spray made driving a nightmare. Still, we managed the journey in less than 5 hours.

Saturday was a shopping day for Christmas presents, including taking Max to his favourite store: Socrates! Socrates sells mind-bending games and toys for children and he scored a plane which flies long distances when you launch it correctly. And, on Sunday, Max came with us first to the Australian Museum and then the newly opened national portrait gallery. At the first, he designed his own future mode of transport on a computer and this was automatically uploaded to a film about a city of the future which we then went and saw. He had the pleasure of seeing his own 'plane' orbiting this city with a picture of Max on the back! And, at the portrait gallery, he went around ticking pictures off a card as he viewed them.



Later that afternoon, we went to Beck's house and assembled Max's Christmas gift from us, a trampoline, much to his delight (pictured). That evening we had an early Christmas meal and opened some of his presents before going outside to wave some sparklers around. This rounded off a hectic day for the VERY happy little man!



Yesterday, in wonderful driving conditions, Dot and I drove the whole distance from Canberra to Armidale in a shade under 8 hours (plus stops for R & R). That meant a shade under 95 kph average for the 756 km journey - a long way! That's the fastest we've ever done the journey.



AS